AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can feel you delaying because you don’t want to go, but it’s my job to make sure you do, so Ethan and I will go downstairs and change. I know you’re not going to change shoes now.”
“We will guard them until you return,” Truth said.
Nicky nodded at him and started down the stairs. Ethan followed without a word like he so often did. I’d asked him about it once, and he said, “I can feel what you’re feeling, hear your thoughts, so why should I say all that out loud?” I’d asked why the rest of my animals to call talked more, then. His reply was, “You’ll have to ask them.” A perfect Ethan answer.
Truth moved closer to the door to the parking lot, so he was between us and the potentially scary outdoors. Wicked got a tie out of his jacket pocket and started putting it on. The tie was the same dark navy as the suit with a tiny pattern of brighter blue fleur-de-lis running through it.
“Seeing you without your tie already in place is almost like seeing you nude in public,” I said, smiling.
He grinned. “I had trouble deciding on the tie, and you can see me nude anytime you want, just extend the invitation.”
The far door to the public part of the Circus opened again. Wicked put himself more squarely between the door and us, but it was a crowd of the security guards in their Halloween-orange shirts that readCircus of the Damnedin big letters on the front with tiny letters sayingSecurityunderneath.Securityin big letters was on the back. Three of them came through the door like an orange wall; they and the four guards behind them were all five-ten or taller with imposing physiques so they almost hid the equally tall figure between them, but the bright red cloak that covered him top to bottom was too eye-catching not to see. That was one reason Asher wore it for the opening of his part as ringmaster, but he didn’t exit his performance for the night still wearing it, surrounded by guards.
The last man through the door closed it and stood guard besideit. The moment he did that I knew there’d be someone else on the other side in the same stance. I also knew that something had gone very wrong.
“What has happened?” Jean-Claude asked.
Asher pulled his hood down, spilling all that wavy golden hair around his face, but the cloak kept the hair from falling free so that it mounded up, hiding most of his face except for glimpses of his pale blue eyes and the face that had made people paint him as Cupid and other Greek Gods centuries before I was born.
Jamie, one of the security guards who was so clean-cut All-American college kid that even I wanted to card him every time I saw him, said, “One of the people in the meet and greet hit him.”
Asher turned on him, snarling and showing fangs; for a second he was frightening, the beast showing through the beauty. “And is it not your job to keep that from happening?”
Jamie backed up, holding his hands up as if to show he was unarmed or meant no offense. “Yes, it is our job.”
The vampire’s power just folded away, and he was all beauty again, the beast gone so fast it was like a switch had been thrown—on monster, off leading man. “Then how did a human hit me hard enough to break the custom-made mask I was wearing?”
Jean-Claude grabbed Asher’s arm. “Are you hurt?”
He finally turned to face us and there was a cut on his cheek about two inches long; it wasn’t bleeding much yet, but it was there. An angry red line above where the holy water scars started. The Church fathers had tried to burn the devil out of Asher one drop of holy water at a time, but even those long-dead priests hadn’t been willing to damage his ice-blue eyes, the perfect line of nose to that kissable mouth. I had been wondering if one of the reasons they took him for torture and not immediate execution as they usually did with vampires back then was because one or more of the Church fathers involved had been attracted to his beauty. Attracted to it, sothey had to destroy it, but too enamored of his face to be willing to ruin it completely.
Jean-Claude reached up to touch the small wound, but Asher grabbed his hand, saying, “I was cut where his fist broke the porcelain against my skin. What kind of master vampire am I that porcelain and human strength could slice my flesh?”
“The guy was huge,” Jamie said, “superstrong for a human.”
“Tell me about it,” one of the newer security said, turning his face to show off the swelling on his face right next to his eye. His name was Kirby, and I still wasn’t sure if it was his first or last name. “If I’d been human he’d have broken my orbital bone, or maybe worse.”
I almost asked what was worse than breaking the bone around your eye, but I already knew that you could pierce the eye itself and squish it like a grape. I’d done it once to save myself from being the unwilling star of a rape/snuff film. I was glad I’d been willing to do it and save myself, but it wasn’t a sensation I wanted to dwell on, and I hoped to never, ever do it again.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Jean-Claude asked.
“I am fine.” Asher sounded bitter when he said it, but it was more anger than physical pain.
I went to stand in front of him and look up into that amazing face. He moved his head just enough so I couldn’t see the scars on the right side. I hated that he was hiding from me again; he’d almost stopped. “Something else is wrong,” I said.
I asked, “I know you wouldn’t all be here if he’d escaped, but who’s holding him for the cops?”
“Claudia was walking the floor tonight to check on some of the new security additions,” Jamie said.
“Our would-be Hercules wasn’t expecting a six-foot-six Hispanic Amazon to show up. The look on his face was almost worth getting hit.” Kirby grinned, then winced.
“He called himself a Spartoi,” Lelio said. He was the darkest-skinned of this group of security, but whatever people guessed about his heritage they were always wrong. They weren’t being racist, or stupid, it was just that no one was ever going to guess that he belonged to an extinct branch of the species tree thatHomo sapiensnow thought it was the only survivor of, except for truly ancient vampires and equally ancient wereanimals that called the ancient vampiresmaster, as far as I knew. I’d stopped speaking in absolutes about some things, and this was one of them. I was still wrapping my head around the fact that among the oldest vampires were some of our original humanoid ancestors, direct or not so direct. I could answer the question now about whether our ancient relatives could speak like we do. They could be and often were more articulate than most of theHomo sapiensI ran into daily. I was still trying to persuade one of them to talk to someone in ancient anthropology, archaeology, or one of the many specialties that would lose their shit at the opportunity, but so far they’d all refused on the grounds that they didn’t want the humans to know they were still alive.
“I thought he said ‘Spartan,’ ” Kirby said.
“No, he said ‘Spartoi,’ ” Lelio said.
“I don’t know the word,” I said.
